There aren’t many ambient labels that have been going for 20+ years, but you can count Ian Boddy’s DiN as one of the greats. An amazing musician and synthesist himself, Ian has curated one of the finest ambient synthesizer-focused labels around, with many of the genre’s greats gracing the catalog over the years. Scanner, Tetsu Inoue, Robert Rich, Nigel Mullaney, Bluetech, and Markus Reuter featuring with stunning full-lengths, and within the label’s Tone Science compilation series, the curations spreads its arms ever wider - proven with the latest edition Tone Science Module 5, featuring works by Hélène Vogelsinger, Johnny Woods and Lisa Bella Donna. Ian also makes brilliant label-focused mixes that highlight some of the work on the label, in both mixed and individual track format, so when I proposed an isolatedmix, we went straight into discussing his own personal inspirations as a mix concept. In true OG style, Ian has dug into a selection of early ambient music, that is often presented in extended (long-form) style (as it was much more back in the day) which means these types of tracks rarely see themselves as a part of DJ mixes nowadays. Ian has taken these excerpts and seamlessly blended them into one educational look back into some of the greats of the early ambient style. A big thanks toWendy Carrol for the isolatedmix art/image. ~ASIP - You're likely considered a veteran of the scene now, but for those new to you, can you give us a brief introduction?IB - Well I first got into Electronic Music in the mid-1970s through bands such as Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Vangelis & Jean Michel Jarre. In 1978 whilst at University studying Biochemistry I was introduced to an open-access sound studio at a place called Spectro where I was confronted by weird & wonderful instruments such as the VCS3 & a host of Revox reel to reel tape recorders. It didn’t take long to get hooked and in 1980 I released my first cassette album & started to play improvised concerts. In 1983 my first vinyl album The Climb was released followed by a performance at the very first UK Electronica festival.I continued to release albums & perform concerts & hone my craft and then in the 1990s, I got into producing library music as well as sound design work. In 1999 I launched the DiN label & in 2002 after 12 years working for Akai I went full-time professional earning a living from my music. The intervening years have seen me split my time between pursuing my own releases / running the DiN label, composing library music & creating sound libraries/sound design.Axiom (DiN64) by Ian BoddyYour mix contains a lot of early ambient musicians. Whether it’s Kraut-rock, Berlin-School, or Brian Eno, what's your point of view on the absolute beginnings of the ambient genre and what was your own experience?It’s a very different experience hearing new music for the first time in your formative years - which is usually in your teens - then coming to a genre of music later in life or when said genre has already been out for quite a while. So the first two Electronic Music tracks I can distinctly remember hearing were The Mysterious Semblance at the Strand of Nightmares by Tangerine Dream from the album Phaedra & Wahnfried 1883 by Klaus Schulze from the album Timewind. I was probably about 15 or 16 and they simply blew me away. I hadn’t heard anything like this before because, well, there simply wasn’t anything else like this before. Each of these artists only had a handful of albums out so it didn’t take long to discover their back catalogues. There were no reference points. This was an incredibly inspiring time for me to hear this music and I think the many years that they have been out now & the tsunami of other music like this will diminish the effect for someone getting into this music now. The term Ambient music is much overused and I was also